


Sui Generis

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-29
Updated: 2007-06-29
Packaged: 2019-01-19 18:45:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12415818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Sui Generis, Latin: of his, her, its, or their own kind: unique. People say that it's the Slytherins' endless ambition that gets them in so much trouble. Right now, these four Slytherins' greatest ambition is to stay alive: trouble doesn't worry them much. A story about what it means to be different, and what it takes to make that extraordinary. ...





	Sui Generis

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

  
Author's notes: 1  


* * *

_Scene 1. The House of Mirrors, to the left just inside a striped, faded circus tent which has the feeling of abandonment despite the fact the poster on the side declares a show beginning that very date and time. Dirt, grime, sticky splashes of spilled soda drinks, smears of animal excrement and reeking stains of day-old vomit discolor the tent like blood stains on a butcher’s apron. The floor is dirty. Giant trailers with colorful scenes painted on the outside loom around the circus tent like the empty carcasses of long dead dinosaurs. They collect grime. The colors are muted. Mud is splattered against their sides like coffee stains down crisp white blouses, down yellow blouses, down blue blouses, down crimson blouses, down green blouses._

_\--Unicorn blood staining a green blouse. A green silk blouse. Its reflection is fleeting in the mirror. She wants to cry out but a hand touches her throat beneath her chin and she can’t because there is nothing there for her--_

_There is nothing here for you._

_There is nothing here for us._

_There is nothing he—_

The Author’s fingers freeze abruptly, hovering above the keys like a spider’s legs as it lowers itself to its delicate web. It is as if the room has instantly become vacuum sealed in the silence following the clacking of the typewriter keys.

There is silence.

There is only _Silence_. _It stretches on like infinity trapped in a glass bottle. A green glass bottle. A muted green glass bottle with a cork stuffed in the top like a dirty rag shoved down a Ringleader’s throat._

_\--We will shove a dirty rag down your throat and watch you die. We will shove ten thousand dirty, soiled rags down your throat for every piece of innocence you have taken from us and watch you die. Slowly die. Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly die like a mosquito trapped in warm resin. We will shove you into infinity, into the muted green glass bottle, like a mosquito trapped in warm resin; we will force you into the opening and watch you struggle to breathe, struggle to keep burning black without oxygen to feed your flame. We will--_

_The flap to the circus tent is visible only by the small sliver of black towards the bottom of it, indicating an opening. From behind an empty traitor the Spectator emerges and pauses outside the sliver._

The Author pauses again. Her head hurts. She can’t feel her eyes. 

She closes them. She rubs her hands across her face. She presses against her numb eyes. She can’t do this.

Her back is aching. Pictures are flashing through her brain like soot-stained trees passing by a train window, like soot-stained faces staring out the windows of a passing train; like the blackened bottoms of the children’s soot-stained feet on the cobbled street as they skittered into alleyways when the rumbling started.

When the rumbling started.

When the Unfolding started.

She was so confused when the Unfolding started. She was so confused after the Unfolding started. She was going to write _Scene 1: The Stage is empty, but for a sign in the corner, large, made of rotting wood, painted letters in crimson. It says, All is not lost._

_All is not lost, it says, all is not_ as it seems _._

The Spectator realizes this from his place in the audience, from his place among the wan faces like so many soggy, trampled dogwood petals on a dirty sidewalk. He’s the only one not crying as the Fireman breathes flames into the audience and the Ringleader laughs cruelly from his pedestal on the swaying elephant’s back. He’s the only one not screaming in terror as the tigers leap through circles of fire and bound into the crowd and the masked clowns cackle and scream and hurdle into the stands with clubs and poisoned flowers. He’s the only one who gets up calmly to leave, and ignores the cowering forms around him as he walks to the House of 

_Mirrors._

_Mirrors are everywhere. The walls are covered with them: floor to ceiling, ceiling to wall, wall to corner, corner to infinity in a green glass bottle. There are thousands of green glass bottles, stretching so far into the backs of the mirrors that the light reflecting from them is bent by gravity and they disappear around the curvature of the earth._

_Mirrors are important now. Mirrors are important._

_Mirrors are Salvation._

_Mirrors are Reality._

_You cannot put a mask on a mirror. A mirror cannot be masked._

**_A mirror cannot be masked_ ** _._

_A mirror_ rests in the pocket of the Illusionist, but he won’t take it out to look within it. He can’t take it out to look within it. If he takes it out to look within it, the illusion will shatter like a delicate blown-sugar figurine atop a birthday cake.

Everything will shatter if he looks in the mirror. Everything will shatter. The Illusionist cannot shatter his mirrors or the Illusion will be lost.

He - ** _cannot be masked_** _-_ wishes he had something besides trickery to hide behind.

People are crying and cowering and flames are licking the sides of the tent like feather-fingers only with dark hot heat and he has to leave because nothing is an illusion anymore, the illusions have become reality and they are emerging from the dark with gaping jaws open wide. The mirror shatters in his pocket as a paint-masked clown knocks him to the ground and he has to run and run and run and he only ends up back in the House of Mirrors and he sees himself standing there and there is no mask and no illusion and he can no longer hide as he stretches on to infinity where the gravity bends the light.

And all the mirrors _shatter._

_Shattering, shattering, everything is shattered._

_Don’t panic._

_Don’t panic._

_Don’t panic._

_Don’t_ think too hard, the Acrobat thinks. Don’t think too hard. Don’t even think about not thinking too hard. 

…It’s impossible. But so is what she’s about to do. So maybe there’s no such thing as impossible. Is there no such thing? It would be nice, she thinks. 

But probably impossible.

The Acrobat breathes deeply. She steps forward to the edge of her sky-high platform and tries to block out the terrified shrieks of the crowd below her. They are too preoccupied, she hopes, to notice her panicked eyes; they are too preoccupied to notice that the panicked eyes do not match the calm, still nature of her elegant, flexible body.

The trapeze swings before her, only slightly, the movement caused by the undulating heat produced by the panicking crowd below and the excited hordes of cackling clowns and manic flame breathers and stomping elephants. 

She throws her arms upwards, pushes her chest out in the universal pose that means she is about to do something to make the crowd hold its breath if it were only paying attention.

She closes her eyes.

And she jumps into _infinity._

_In the end there was only ever infinity. Things were never as divided as they seemed, never so black and white as was imagined. In the beginning the Four stood inside the shattered house of mirrors and watched the colors reflecting in the broken pieces strewn about them and were reminded of the surface of a bubble._

_A bubble resting on broken glass._

The Spectator watches as the mirrors shatter and the Illusionist falls to his unprotected knees and fixes his gaze on his own reflection in a shard of glass larger than the rest. He watches as the Acrobat falls from her trapeze and tumbles through the net in a flurry of sequined costume and long hair until she lands in the mirrors and her blood mixes with the Illusionist’s.

He watches as the Author reaches for another page and slices her hand on a shard of mirror lodged in her typewriter.

He moves. He winds the page in himself, shoves the platen to the right, and feels his ankle grow warm as blood flows from a tear in his trousers on the lower part of his calf. The Illusionist cries. The Acrobat groans. The Author looks at him with wide, bloodshot eyes.

He places the Author’s hands on the keys.

She stains them red as she types

_Scene 2: Infinity._


End file.
